Vienna Media News 05/2016
Major exhibitions in the second half of 2016

Sex in Vienna and erotica in Japan, Hieronymous Bosch’s Last Judgment and artists of the Biedermeier period, Martin Kippenberger and Franz West: an overview of major exhibitions in Vienna from June 2016.

Kunstforum Wien presents a portrait of Martin Kippenberger – one of the most important and most controversial artists of the 20th century – in an exhibition entitled T.ü. (Titel überflüssig), or “no title required”. The show puts a particular focus on language as well as Kippenberger’s before-and-after pictures from various eras in the history of art. Artist and designer Nathalie Du Pasquier is an autodidact who enjoyed a long and successful career in product design. Since 1987 Du Pasquier has focused her energies on painting, and an exhibition at the Kunsthalle Wien sets up a dialogue between her recent paintings and drawings from her Memphis period. Artist collaborations are the inspiration for the Franz West & Co. exhibition at the 21er Haus. In addition to working on projects with leading international artists such as Albert Oehlen, Douglas Gordon and Mike Kelley, he has also teamed up with key Austrian figures including Heimo Zobernig, Peter Kogler and artist collective Gelatin. The Belvedere shines a spotlight on painting between the years 1830 and 1860 in Biedermeier Extended. Waldmüller and the Painting of his Time. This exhibition focuses on “profane” painting from the period, meaning works that present everyday themes: portraits, landscapes and genre paintings in the broadest possible sense.

Two exhibitions in Vienna honor Hieronymus Bosch and his fantastical visions to mark the 500th anniversary of the artist’s death. Both are being presented at the Academy of Fine Arts Picture Gallery. The central highlight is the Netherlandish master’s large triptych, The Last Judgment. Nature gone astray? Chimeras, goblins and monsters (not only) by Hieronymus Bosch looks at the colorful array of frightening creatures found in Bosch’s The Last Judgment and in art from the middle ages to the present day. Hieronymus Bosch 500: The Last Judgment in Vienna is based on this central work. The exhibition focuses on the secrets and unanswered questions surrounding the work on display in the Picture Gallery and casts fresh light on its patron and history. Writer and ceramicist Edmund de Waal (author of The Hare with Amber Eyes) has taken Albrecht Dürer’s famous Dream Vision (1525) watercolor as the starting point for an exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, selecting works from the museum’s permanent collections to present from a new perspective.

One of the major thematic exhibitions coming to Vienna in the second half of 2016 is Sex in Vienna. Passion. Control. Transgression at the Wien Museum. It delineates a sexual topography of the Austrian capital, shining a light on which spaces in the city offered sex to which population groups, and in what form, while also taking a look at the lay of the land today. In Shunga. Erotic Art from Japan, the MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts/Contemporary Art explores the theme of sexuality and erotica in a different cultural milieu. Shunga (meaning picture of spring) artworks have been prevalent in East Asia for a long time. All of the major Japanese ukiyo-e artists produced erotic pictures. 150 woodcuts are on display in this show, loaned by the Leopold private collection, supplemented by works from the MAK’s own collection. Foreign Gods at the Leopold Museum in the MuseumsQuartier surveys traditional art from Africa and Oceania. Over 200 rare ancestral figures, dance masks, weapons and works of architectural sculpture from the extensive collection of the founder of the museum, Rudolf Leopold, are presented alongside works of key modernist artists including Pablo Picasso, André Derain, Amedeo Modigliani, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde and Max Ernst.

Before saying farewell to founding director Dietmar Steiner, the Az W – Architekturzentrum Wien is taking a look at the current state of architecture and its roots in the history of architecture. The exhibition At the End: Architecture takes stock of many developments in recent decades. The Poetics of the Material at the Leopold Museum presents six artists living in Vienna: Benjamin Hirte, Sonia Leimer, Christian Mayer, Mathias Pöschl, Anne Schneider and Misha Stroj. Their works are not only characterized by a broad range of ties to different cultural discourses, forms of narration and depictions of history and stories, but also by the arrangement of the media and materials used by the artists. Film stills offer visual snapshots of a film as well as being photographs in their own right. The Albertina is presenting an exhibition devoted entirely to this hybrid genre, showing 150 film stills from the 1910s to the 1970s.